More and more software applications are being developed and deployed in communications networks to conduct business and other activities. These “network applications” are typically installed on some form of computing hardware connected to a network, such as application servers on the Internet. Such application servers provide a platform for deploying, executing, and managing sessions with the applications throughout the applications' life cycles. Once deployed, users can initiate client-server sessions with the applications whereby the users and applications communicate over the network to conduct some type of activity offered by the application.
Often, such activities are performed in the context of conducting some type of business between the users and the applications' owners. An application owner will be referred to herein simply as a “business.” The types of business activities that can be conducted between users (whether human or other applications) and network applications are practically limitless. Network applications can be developed to perform a few relatively simple business activities or many very complex, multi-threaded business activities. Application users may be internal to a business, such as employees using an enterprise application, or external to the business, such as a customer or a partner of a business.
Regardless of the nature of the activity for which network applications are developed, the businesses deploying such applications are often concerned with many parameters associated with the activities being conducted via their applications. Such parameters may indicate information such as how, when, where and by whom their applications are being used, how their applications are performing, how the network infrastructure to which their applications are connected are performing, and the like. In light of the vast variations in network applications, in the types of business conducted via the applications, and in the types of activities performed with the applications, there is a widespread need for a tool for monitoring network applications.
Any approaches that may be described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.